Ice and Steel
by NobodysAngel80
Summary: Pride and duty offer cold comfort when one looks back over one's life with pain in the past and dread of the future.


Author's Note: So, I've been on a Bleach kick lately. I'm not sure what exactly caused it (though the boyfriend getting me hooked into the Hueco Mundo arc where you just can't turn off a single episode because they're all To Be Continued –graaaah!- probably isn't helping). However, here I am with another little ficlet, sort of an intro, like "Stand" to a larger overarcing story. For this story, the song "Anthem of the Angels" by Breaking Benjamin was my soundtrack, so give a listen if you like, it's a beautiful, sad song. Again, Tite Kubo owns it all except any OC's that might show up, I just play with his pretty characters. Enjoy!

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><p>For love, he had defied them all.<p>

Five years with her wasn't long enough, and yet at the same time it seemed an eternity. Five years spent with a woman who was his breath and blood and heart and soul… but also five years of watching that beautiful, sweet face and knowing that her heart wasn't his. At first, he had been so certain that she would grow to love him. As the years passed, one, two three… he came to realize that it wasn't going to change. As she became more pale, more faded and fragile, more obsessed with finding the sister that she had left behind, he felt a slow ice creeping over his heart. Not against her, never against her. But against what he knew was happening, he fortified himself with ice and steel. As soon as she had slipped away from him, he was fully aware that there would be no more escape. She had been his only defiance, and she would be his last one.

He stood as he always did in the shadow of the cherry trees, not because of his own affinity for them, but because she had always looked so beautiful here, gently lit by moonlight, because the sun was too harsh for one like her. He wasn't often given to be poetic, at least not out loud, and certainly not inspired by anyone but her, but she did seem to draw it from him. He could have expounded for years on her beauty, on her softness, on the graceful way she moved and the gentle sweetness of her smile. But she was gone now, and he couldn't bring himself to do it again. However, she had been the last bastion against losing himself completely in what the clan wished him to be, and with her gone, he felt adrift, like a ship with no anchor, no port to call home, no lighthouse beckoning him to safety. There was nothing left to cling to except the clan.

He wondered sometimes, though he would never confide it to a living soul, if it had not just been Hisana that died that day. It was as everything young and hopeful and happy had died with her, had been laid to rest in those white, folded hands of hers along with the shell of her body. He was the leader that the clan wanted, stern and cold, impassive in his regal stoicism, while inside, everything rebelled against what he was becoming, like a dragon thrashing in a trap. And that was what he felt like sometimes. Something huge and powerful reared and roared and fought within him, aching to break free. But he had promised. Never again, he had sworn to their graves. Never again would he defy the laws and rules, never again would he bring shame to the house. Even though the thought of her being considered shameful and low was anathema to him, he swore it, with a throat full of bile at the cruelty of what they insinuated. And the steel and ice encroached ever closer.

It had come full circle now – they wished him to wed, to produce an heir, to carry on the family line and strengthen the clan. Faceless, nameless women from every noble family presented to him, all of them dressed up like dolls, with impassive expressions on their faces. He looked at them, searching their faces, wondering if they felt the same as he did. No… they were content with their lot in life, smug in their superiority, and he could find no gentleness in their faces. He spoke with them, coolly polite and detached, mouthing the right words, and feeling that ice and steel creeping ever further over his heart, just like Kurosaki Ichigo's mask crept over his face. Masks were, he decided, remarkably comfortable.

After it was over, each inevitable meeting, he would go out to the gardens, stand under the cherry trees, and try to let the cool night wind wash away the ugliness that he felt creeping over him. He supposed he was fortunate; how many nobles were ever able to feel so passionate and tender a love as he had? But then in the long hours of the night, watching the moon and thinking of how it reminded him of her, he wondered if perhaps it was less a blessing and more a curse to have felt such a thing, for now he craved it. He knew what he would be missing in the cold, dutiful marriage that he knew he was going to be trapped into. The chains were twisting tighter, and the dragon's wings couldn't even beat anymore, bound and hidden under the eternal snow of his face.

And the ice and steel slid further over his heart, cold and unforgiving, drowning and silencing the pleas and screams and defiance. The ages stretched on ahead of him, and as he watched his future play out in his mind, it seemed to him to be an eternal, endless night; black and consuming, with no moon or star to chase away the darkness.

And the ice and steel slid further over his heart…

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><p>Thank's for reading! Hope you enjoyed, please feel free to review!<p> 


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